Kifaya's Kitchen: Fine Somali comfort food in Cleveland (photos)

CLEVELAND, Ohio - There was a lone banana. It was sitting quietly by itself on the counter when I went to pick up our food at the window that separates the cooking area from the dining room at Kifaya's Kitchen. Assuming it was a forgotten snack left by a recent customer, abandoned for the more exotic pleasures of Kifaya's kitchen, I nevertheless asked the server about it. "The banana?" She asked. "That's for Somalis."

Further conversation was cut off by the hungry baying of the ravening crowd I had brought, luring them across town on one of the most treacherous nights of last winter for a taste of Somali food. It was well worth the snowy trek.

Kifaya Mohamed's rudimentary restaurant barely seats 20 at three booths and several tables. They're all neatly covered with flowering lavender vinyl tablecloths and decked out with vases of cheerful red silk roses, but the food is the star. We ate our way through much of the short, but very satisfying, menu of East African cuisine that night.

But before we go forward, a bit of background may be in order.

Somali food is a synthesis of a variety of influences. In the 19th and 20th century, Somalia spent decades under Italian and British rule, and for centuries before, it was a major trading center for spices throughout the region. So it's a world cuisine in every sense of the phrase, from the Arabic salad, finely diced cucumber, tomatoes, green pepper, and red onion tossed in a piquant lemon-spiked dressing to basto, Somali-style spaghetti.

All these culinary threads are woven together beautifully by Kifaya Mohamed, a Somali native who arrived in Cleveland from a refugee camp and has been running her eponymous restaurant here since 2013, together with three of her seven children, who help out in front and in the kitchen as needed.

So let's start with samosas. Similar to the various savory triangular pastries familiar throughout India, Kifaya's have a thin crunchy phyllo-like dough like those made in the Jaipur region. Stuffed with diced vegetables, curried ground beef, a creamy cheese, or tilapia, you could make a meal of these plump and perfectly crisp-fried samosas all by themselves.

Main entrees of grilled chicken, tilapia, or goat are served with either an excellent basmati rice -- heady with flavors of fenugreek, cumin, coriander and cardamom with enough turmeric to add a burnished golden glow to the proceedings -- or pasta. An homage to the Italian colonials, the spaghetti comes with a light tomato sauce, sometimes with ground beef, and is fairly undistinguished. Best combinations include the chicken, tender pieces of well-spiced meat, or the goat, a little bony but well worth the effort to get to the succulent bits, both with the extraordinary rice.

For the ultimate Somali comfort food, go for the KayKay. There's a variety of options, but for a deeply soul-satisfying dish, have the Suqaar KayKay. It's Somali pot roast, shredded and served with an aromatic gravy, vegetables and white beans over shredded pieces of jabatic, a soft flatbread similar to Indian chapati. The gravy soaks into the bread, turning the whole thing into a gelatinous dish of addictive deliciousness. Trust me. Or not. If you must, you can also get the suqaar on its own, with the jabatic rolled neatly on the side.

Finish with a fragrant cup of shai, Yemeni tea steeped with cardamom, cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg, made rich with evaporated milk. As a departing customer described it to us one evening, it's like drinking pumpkin pie.

As for that "abandoned" banana above, yes, the fruit is ubiquitous in Somali cuisine. A major crop in Somalia, they are optionally incorporated into every meal of the day, either mashed into rice, or just sliced and eaten with whatever else is served.

It sets up a great sweet/savory culinary conversation, adding another dimension to the already beautifully modulated spicing of almost every dish. So next time you're at Kifaya's Kitchen, you, too, can eat like a Somali. If it's not on the counter, ask for a banana.